Well, the weather this morning is brutal and blustery and all signs of spring have been whitewashed and wind whipped. It would only feign ignorance to act surprised. The weather in Wisconsin and around the world grows more and more chaotic as we increasingly see the effects of climate change. As farmers, we are at the mercy of the weather, and today we will not be going outside to work in the gardens, or even the greenhouses. I take pity on Giz and Balio and allow them to spend the day indoors. When I go out to do the morning chicken chores, I had barely turned the handle on the door and a powerful gust of wind almost ripped the door off the hinges and my arm out of socket. Needless to say, the chickens will be staying in the coop today. If they flapped their wings, even a little bit, in this wind, they are likely to land somewhere in Richland Center. Rufus is already restless and it is only 8:00 am. We are supposed to have this weather for two whole days. I am exceedingly glad that I decided not to plant the kohlrabi in field B. Last year we did an early outdoor planting and attempted to cover it with plastic to weather a snowy wind storm like this one. It did not go well. As Rufus and I wrestled with the 100 ft of plastic, it tossed us around like rag dolls. After multiple failed attempts to “drape” the plastic over the hoops, we abandoned the hoop idea, laid the plastic flat onto the plants, anchored it down with sandbags and went in the house with a serious case of what we at Keewaydin call “wind aggression”. Wind aggression is an emotional breakdown that strikes a normally happy person into pure frustrated madness. We hunkered down in the farmhouse, watching Mother Nature give our plants a proper beating and whispered curses under our breathe, as we knew it was out of our hands. Mother Nature always wins.